[Establishment of cultured cells sustaining bone metabolism and their application for osteogenesis in vivo]

Osteoblasts, osteoclasts and osteocytes respectively, play important roles responsible for bone metabolism. These cells were cultured in vitro by many researchers, and considerably contributed to recent basic research on bone metabolism. Especially MC3T3E1-cells, cloned mouse osteoprogenitor cells, can perform bone formation-process in culture. Furthermore, several osteoblastic cell line including our SaM-1 cells were established from rodent calvaria, osteosarcoma, and human bone or periosteum. Also, osteoclasts are actually formed from human bone marrow cells, as well as rodent bone marrow cells, recently. It has become effective that the results obtained by using normal human cultured cells apply to human bone metabolism in vivo.